When we moved to the US and had to get green cards, my brother (16 at the time) had to prove he wasn't married. We came from western Europe so we thought it was a big joke, but nope, they wanted to make sure my brother wasn't married and I (13) wasn't pregnant. So I had to have a full gyno exam to make sure I wasn't pregnant.

But how do you prove you're not married? I don't remember what all they took down to the INS but it would take my brother three years to get his green card (the rest of us got it within 6-9 months). It was a lot of back and forth, a crapload of paperwork, and asking various people to write letters.

When he finally got his green card...they listed his gender as female. My mom joked it would be easier for my brother to get a sex change operation than to fix the error. She was kinda right.

My brother had to go to a doctor to certify that he was male and had always been male. It took until my brother was almost done with college.

There's a lot of things I didn't like about Bush but one thing I have to commend him for is the overhaul of the INS. I mean, it couldn't get any worse, but finally having the option of making an appointment online and only waiting 2 hours instead of going down there, waiting 8 hours...and then be told that "oh our computer system is down so you have to come back tomorrow!"...

TX - So apparently I am dead.

I went to apply for a car loan and was denied an hour ago because the social security number I provided came back as belonging to a deceased person.

We checked to see it was not a typo. The social is mine and I proved that it was my SS number with the correct documentation. They ran it again and yeah dead. So apparently according to credit reporting agencies I am dead.

So I am freaking out now. Was this some sort of mistake on the car dealership? Was this someone stealing my identity and dieing? What do I do here?

My dad was supposedly dead according to the government when he went to vote last year. The little old ladies at the polling center said it was the most excitement they'd had in years. (Someone in the same city with the same first and last name but different middle name died that year for real, so that's probably where the problem arose).

I'm always surprised at the level of "freak out" generated by obvious clerical errors. I appreciate that it could potentially end up becoming a big pain in the arse but what is OP really worrying about? That a government sponsored hitman is going to show up so that the books can be balanced?

You cannot leave (or enter) the country on a dead person's passport, nor can you renew a dead person's driver's license, nor business license, nor do dead people collect social security or disability payments or military pensions. Dead people cannot make legally binding contracts. and they are not covered by any medical insurance including Medicare and Tricare.

I think you are vastly underestimating how huge and complex the social security administration is. And how old their servers are, and how many currently-alive people currently receiving social security payouts were issued numbers before computers existed: how many social security accounts were never digitized? The answer isn't zero. Imagine how much time and how many people it would take to revise the entire system, and how much money that would cost. And now imagine yourself explaining this to Congress in such a way that they agree to allocate tax dollars to paying for it.

ABA Routing Transit Numbers have been around since 1911, according to Wikipedia. I can't find confirmation, but the article (nor any other source I've happened across, dedicating a few minutes to it) doesn't give any indication of the 9th check digit being adopted after that.